Something in Disguise (34 page)

He’d happened to be in London for a spot of Christmas shopping – Mr Pinkney doubtless knew what store the ladies set by Christmas – and so his wife asked him to pick up her
will . . . His voice died away and he leaned slightly forward in his chair in order to fix Mr Pinkney more firmly with his simple, expectant gaze.

Mr Pinkney also leaned forward and cleared his throat very gently. Possibly the colonel didn’t understand that generally speaking affairs of this nature could not be conducted in this
manner. But the colonel did not look as though he understood what Mr Pinkney meant. What Mr Pinkney
meant
was that if Mrs Browne-Lacey wished to make a will, it was up to her to communicate
personally with him or any other lawyer whom she wished to direct in the matter. Mrs Browne-Lacey had not been to see Mr Pinkney –

His wife was far from well. Not up to doing her own Christmas shopping in fact. Besides, like most sensible women, she expected her husband to deal with all that sort of thing –

Perhaps she would care to write to Mr Pinkney with instructions –

She wouldn’t have sent him to fetch the papers if she’d wanted to write – she wasn’t
well
: he was only trying to save her any extra trouble –

Mr Pinkney entirely appreciated the colonel’s attitude, but he was afraid that in this particular matter he really was unable to act without personal instructions. He leaned back in his
chair rather firmly, as one closing this interview.

It seemed to him quite amazing – all they wanted to do was leave things to each other – that so simple a matter should be made so complicated. No doubt Mr Pinkney had some expert,
technical reason for feeling as he did, but for the life of him, he couldn’t see what it could be.

Mr Pinkney sighed; if they weren’t interrupted he might well be let in for trying to explain to the old boy. But luckily (though late) Miss Scantling came in with the stock bogus message
(used on relatively few clients, it was true, but on them with jaw-aching regularity).

‘Your call to Rome is waiting.’

Mr Pinkney started to his feet. Forgive him, but he must take that call. Perhaps Colonel Browne-Lacey would discuss matters with his wife and let him know after the holiday what was required. Mr
Pinkney would be happy to go down to Surrey if Mrs Browne-Lacey wished. The colonel must excuse him – all the compliments of the season . . .

The air was raw, and seemed colder after the stuffy warmth of Mr Pinkney’s office. The colonel’s thoughts for the first few minutes in the Strand were positively murderous. Damm the
man! Pompous, pretentious, pedantic, pettifogging little cog in the wheel. It was people like Mr Pinkney who were responsible for the decline of this country. Bureaucratic bores, intent on some
letter of a minor law at the expense of getting anything whatever done . . .

Lunch would be heartening. He’d get a bus in the Strand to his club. He got the bus all right: simply because the traffic was solid: you could step on to a bus any time, and people were
constantly doing this and stepping off again. After ten minutes of being stationary and crawling forward the odd yard, he got off too and walked. One certainly got on faster walking, but still not
fast enough. It was half past one by the time he reached his club only to find that the luncheon room was full. He enjoyed his first drink, however, but after two more his indigestion seemed worse.
At least, funnily enough, draining his glass and suddenly remembering Pinkney leaning back in his chair, he had the extraordinary sensation of something slamming against his rib cage, his gullet,
the back of his throat or the top of the front of his head – a kind of weak banging that hurt and was very bad for him without making any vital difference . . . Afterwards he felt distant and
relaxed; as though something momentous had happened that nobody else could possibly understand – like his heart stopping and his blood changing direction, a difficult and dangerous thing to
do. It was not easy to put the glass on the table and he couldn’t even think clearly about it not being easy. He’d simply got too much on his plate. A bit later when he’d almost
had a doze, and they’d told him they had a table for him, he summed it all up. Filthy weather, Christmas, bureaucrats, the wilful unpredictability of women – he’d got to simplify
things somewhat. His spirits rose at the sight of the menu when Doris finally brought it to him: it was nearly two and he was starving. He decided upon hare soup, grilled sole and treacle tart.
Henry came over, and the colonel told him he was busy today and how about half a bottle of his usual, and Henry smiled admiringly at the colonel’s acumen and everything seemed all right for a
minute or two.

But when it came, he didn’t really enjoy his lunch; left most of the soup to leave room for the sole, but then found he didn’t seem to fancy the sole. He felt tired, somehow, and
he’d clean forgotten what treacle tart did to his dentures, so he had a drop of coffee, signed his bill and made off. Getting to Selfridge’s was so bad he nearly gave up, but by the
time he felt like that he’d shouldered and tramped three-quarters of his way there, and he couldn’t think of anything else to get, or, come to that, anywhere else to get it.

He had a bit of luck in Selfridge’s. They were selling small, white handkerchiefs with a nice bit of lace on them and embroidered initials in bundles of a dozen. This was when he realized
that both their names began with M – a considerable saving. He bought a bundle and got the girl to divide them into two lots of six and then to wrap them up fairly well in flat boxes with
robins on them. He was in and out of the shop like a dose of salts. It then took him – he timed it – nearly an hour to reach Waterloo. Nothing but queues when he got there: he
couldn’t even buy a platform ticket because the machines he went to had all run out or broken down or something. So then of course he had to go back to the bottom of the ordinary ticket queue
again. He just caught a train, and that meant standing in the draughty corridor for the whole journey next to a man, who, as he planned to tell Myrtle, was definitely not using Amplex: also, he
hadn’t brought his muffler, and had the uneasy feeling that he was getting a stiff neck. He sometimes wondered whether he took enough care of himself.

The Wolseley wouldn’t start – at least, not until he had totally lost his temper, got out the handle and had a go at turning her over. Icy gusts of station air eddied unerringly
round the gap between his socks and his trousers as he bent despairingly over the machine, at the same time as he felt trickles of sweat edge their way from behind his ears to the top of his
collar. He was late for Myrtle already, and what on earth was he to do if this infernal engine wouldn’t start? Just then it did – gave a convulsive heave in a forward direction
(he’d left it in gear) and died again. But it
had
started.

All the way to the Monkey Puzzle Hotel he tried to think out what he was going to say to Myrtle, but he was driving along a road he didn’t know at all well and he was worried about being
late – for the second time running with her. Also, the snag about rehearsing conversations was that people – women, at any rate – simply did not say whatever it was you’d
planned they should say; so the whole thing was thrown out pretty well from the start.

He was certainly right about things getting thrown out. When he got to the Monkey Puzzle, first he was told that Mrs Hanger-Davies was not in, had gone to hospital or some such gibberish: then
he was told – none of the blasted servants spoke decent English – that Madame-very-work-not-see-at-all stuff. He brushed aside the feller who said all that; he was a little chap and
fell against a huge wreath of real holly that stood on an easel in the entrance hall – in fact he was such a little runt, that he nearly fell through it. The colonel couldn’t help
seeing the funny side of that. He pushed open the door to Myrtle’s private sitting-room-cum-office without ceremony and went in.

She was there, of course, but in the middle of some interminable telephone call. She looked upset and abstracted and not even specially glad to see him.

It was minutes after he had tip-toed with an elaborate pantomime of not disturbing her that she stopped her monotonous performance of listening for a long time and then saying how sorry she was
and then listening again. Then it turned out that the chef – cook chap – had dropped dead that afternoon – heart, or something.

‘It was his poor wife I was talking to. Poor thing; two kids
and
she’s a foreigner. He was only forty-six, she says. Really – I seem to be haunted by it: first Dennis
and now Antonio: you can’t help wondering who the third will be. There’s no rhyme or reason to it
and
the holiday coming on and all. He was only halfway through the turkeys and
they say there’s going to be snow.’ She blew her nose for rather a long time – ending up by wringing the end of it while she was still blowing which the colonel found a bit
much.

‘It sounds as though a nice cup of tea would do us both good,’ he suggested hopefully; there was no sign of any other refreshment.

‘Out of the question – for me, anyway, I’m afraid. I must be off to the kitchens. I could have a tray sent through to the residents’ lounge if you’re very
keen.’

‘Oh, come – surely you could spare a few minutes m’dear. It’s Christmas
Eve
, after all.’

But she had got to her feet and was tucking her handkerchief in the pocket of her emerald green cardigan. ‘You wouldn’t realize as you’ve never been in the business, but
it’s just
because
of the holiday that I must keep on the go. I’ve spent all afternoon trying the agencies for a temporary but of course they’ve got nobody and they close
early, and then it took me a long time to get hold of his poor wife, and we’re nearly full right through over next week-end and one way and another I just don’t know which way to
turn.’

Controlling his rage he asked about the cruise.

‘Oh I cancelled that first thing. I couldn’t possibly go away now for ages. If I do get a replacement for Antonio I’ll have to break them in, and if I don’t, the cooking
will have to be done by yours truly. Is that for me? How nice; I’m always short of hankies. I’ll keep it till tomorrow to open. Shall I ask them to bring you some tea in the
lounge?’

But he said he thought he would be getting along, he mustn’t be too late. They wished each other a Merry Christmas and he stumped out to his car that had had ample time to get freezing
cold again.

In the car he nearly cried: well – actual tears came to his eyes. Damn it all! He’d keyed himself up all
day
for this meeting with Myrtle: he’d planned that it should be
important – cosy, intimate, but definitely epoch-making. Just as she seemed to like recalling how funny that they should have met in the same railway carriage three weeks running, she was to
have remembered tea on Christmas Eve . . . Well, she wasn’t off on her cruise: one had to count one’s blessings. On the cold, slow journey back to Monks’ Close he tried to do
this, and Alice, his only daughter, came suddenly – and for the first time since she had left home – into his mind. She had always been an attentive housekeeper; warn room, hot meal,
no-questions-asked type of thing. An admirable stopgap, that was what Alice had always been, and for the first time, here he was, going to have to manage everything without her.

Alice had spent the afternoon having a rest on her bed as Mrs Mount had insisted she should. She and Leslie were spending Christmas with his parents: it was one of those large
plans that Alice didn’t think about too much when it was first mooted and then realized later that the reason she hadn’t was that she would have dreaded it so much. Ever since her
miscarriage – and that seemed weeks ago now – she had found it very difficult to care about anything. This was not, as Leslie and his mother seemed to think, because she was so
heart-broken at losing the baby – she wasn’t and hadn’t been that in the least. She’d wondered when she woke up the first night in the nursing home whether she’d lost
someone she might have been able to talk to, but the thought had simply crossed her mind and left no wake. Probably not, was the answer she had given herself at the time. What she had found
unnerving was how much everybody else seemed to expect her to feel, and what a lot they seemed to know about it. She’d spent ages listening to the various things that Leslie, Mrs Mount and
Rosemary told her she was feeling. When they weren’t there she simply lay either staring at the ceiling or with her eyes shut. She’d had pneumonia as well as the miscarriage, and for a
few days people hadn’t talked so much – had just brought flowers, which she had liked. The nurses had been very kind all the time; they kept telling her how she was
going
to
feel, but they did not commiserate or describe any similar experience. She was a very good patient, they told her, and she certainly never complained or asked for anything, but this was only
because there was nothing she wanted. It was not until she was more or less over the pneumonia that she began to notice that there was something wrong with her – that she was, or had become,
a sort of gap or void. She did not mind being like that very much but she felt that everybody else would mind if they noticed, and she became increasingly afraid that they might. With them her face
ached with trying to smile and respond generally, and when she was alone she found herself listening – to see if anyone was there – to see whether she could catch herself out existing,
or not existing, as the case might be.

Alice had always found communication with anyone difficult, although up until now she had been able to talk to herself. But now there was the sort of silence inside her, as though it was too
dark to see at all, and there had been a heavy fall of snow so that all ordinary sounds of people had ceased, some general and complete eclipse of the senses that would be mysterious and awful if
one had left any sense working that could know that. She did still seem to have, albeit precariously, some small, critical stronghold that intermittently sent out a series of S.O.S.s of a
disapproving nature. The results of these were useless. On one occasion, the chaplain looked in on her during his rounds and asked if there was anything he could do for her, and had only halfway
withdrawn his head from round her door before she had said yes. When he was sitting down, his initial expression of alarm fading to goodwill, she tried very hard to tell him about this
non-existence feeling and ended by asking him what he thought it meant. He had replied, after not much hesitation, that it was clearly a case of body being so debilitated that mind – he let
alone spirit – could not function properly, if at all. She would feel miles better, he said, when she had recovered from the effects of the antibiotics and benefited from whatever tonic he
was sure she was getting. When she was up – a bit of a change – the sea, perhaps, and she would be a new woman. He’d pop in again before she left them, he had added when on his
feet, which he was sure would be
soon
. The next time, she had asked her doctor whether people who had had rather bad miscarriages and pneumonia often felt that they did not exist. Of course
they didn’t he had answered at once: it was all in her mind: women often felt run-down and nervy after a miscarriage and that set them imagining all kinds of things about themselves. There
was nothing the matter with her; she must simply not give way to hysteria. He had no doubt that she’d be pregnant again in no time and Bob’s your uncle. She gave up after that.